Meet the Man Who Inspired ‘Homeland’

While “Homeland” fans are waiting for the Sept. 29 return of Showtime’s addictive thriller, they can catch up now on the Israeli TV series that inspired it. “Prisoners of War” is streaming on Hulu, where new episodes from the show’s second season are appearing on Tuesdays. (Subscribers to the paid service, Hulu Plus, can watch all 14 episodes immediately.)

The Israeli and U.S. shows share connective tissue, of course: Hostages held for years by terrorists return to their homes and face painful readjustments. However, the shows diverge in plot and tone: “Homeland” cranked up the heat with Claire Danes’s obsessed C.I.A. character and a major assassination plot; “Prisoners of War” smoldered with its focus on family tension. In the second season, however, “Prisoners” escalated with immediate action and questions surrounding a POW that had been presumed dead.

Straddling both series is Gideon Raff, the creator of “Prisoners of War” who writes and directs every episode. He is also an executive producer of “Homeland,” though his hands-on work for the show has scaled back as the series progressed and other projects cropped up. Read a Q&A after the jump.

What have you learned about the way viewers consume “Prisoners of War” on Hulu versus traditional television in Israel.

The advantage in the second season is that with Hulu Plus they can binge view it. Honestly, I think it’s awesome. It’s better for the viewer and we, as storytellers, have the freedom to tell highly serialized stories without restating things and taking it slow in case viewers need to catch up. It’s almost a novelistic experience.

Did the action and suspense elements of “Homeland” rub off on you?

It rubbed off on me, but not on season two of “Prisoners of War.” That was already written before we had shot “Homeland” one. Because of the way television is produced in Israel, the whole season has to be written in advance before we shoot it. “Prisoners” two is filled with action elements because that’s what I like to do as a creator.

Do Israeli viewers have different tastes in TV than Americans?

As creators in Israel, our biggest challenge is that on any given week, our audience is watching “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad” and also an Israeli show, so we have to find a way to compete. One way to do that is to go deep on characters in a way that you don’t see on American TV, though we’re seeing that more on American cable now. It’s a small market in Israel. We don’t have that panic about being cancelled if by the second episode we’re not doing well. We’re allowed the freedom to tell the story.

The “Homeland” producers deliberately accelerated their storytelling to reveal plot twists earlier than audiences expected. How does the pacing on “Prisoners” compare?

There are probably more twists in “Prisoners of War,” but it was also important for me to keep a very credible feeling to the series, as if these are real people and a real story that could have happened. In Israel we all go to the army, so if something happens to a soldier, it’s as if it happened to our own household. It’s not a subject in America that is constantly judged, but in Israel it is.

There was some backlash to “Homeland” in its second season, partly due to inflated expectations. Did you experience any of that on “Prisoners,” which was an instant hit in Israel?

I experienced the opposite. The backlash started when people heard the idea before the show was on the air. It was more controversial than I ever expected. We were attacked for exploiting the subject [of POWs] for ratings. But the minute it aired, the discourse became about the subjects in the show. There was such anticipation for the second season that I felt a lot of pressure not to disappoint. So I worked myself like a dog, but it broke viewership records.

The room full of writers is a fixture of the American TV system. Why do you write all the episodes of “Prisoners” yourself?

Every character on “Prisoners of War” became such a person to me that I can’t imagine anyone else writing an episode. And because of the smaller budget, it made more sense to just write it myself. Also, we don’t write and then shoot each show in order as they do in the U.S. Because we [map out the season] in advance, for me it was more about closing the door and writing the series.

There’s been a rush by U.S. producers to adapt other Israeli shows. Has that had any effect on the budgets there or the kind of shows being created?

Things haven’t changed in the way the shows are budgeted. It’s the same market. But there’s an appetite for more adaptations and so when executives in Israel read a script they think of whether they can sell it. That’s a good thing, and there’s a danger in that. One reason why “Prisoners of War” is so successful is because it’s local.

You co-wrote the pilot of “Homeland” and you’re also an executive producer of the show. How directly are you involved with the show day-to-day now?

I’m not involved in the third season because I’m working on a new show called “Tyrant” for FX. It’s a show about an American family that gets entangled in Middle Eastern politics and we’re about to shoot the pilot. In addition I’m working on the third season of “Prisoners of War” on the weekends and in my spare time. On the first two seasons of “Homeland,” I read the scripts and gave my notes and I produced what we shot outside of Charlotte [N.C., the show’s primary shooting location]. For the third season I’m reading the scripts, but the only thing I can tell you is that it’s excellent.

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